Fans pick 100 books like The Rise of Fishes

By John A. Long,

Here are 100 books that The Rise of Fishes fans have personally recommended if you like The Rise of Fishes. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of A Fish Caught in Time

Susan Ewing Author Of Resurrecting the Shark: A Scientific Obsession and the Mavericks Who Solved the Mystery of a 270-Million-Year-Old Fossil

From my list on curious creatures from deep time.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was young, I worked on fishing boats in Alaska and developed an affection for weird sea creatures. All manner of unusual marine life would come up on the line, like wild-looking sea stars, pointy-nosed skates, and alien-looking ratfish. Later, I graduated from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks with a degree in Communications. One of my early jobs was with the Washington Department of Wildlife public information department, writing about fish, as well as other wildlife-related topics. When I moved to Bozeman, Montana, I had the opportunity to create content for a museum exhibit on early life forms. That hooked me on all things paleo. It is a joy to write about and share the things I loveā€”like oddball creatures from deep time.

Susan's book list on curious creatures from deep time

Susan Ewing Why did Susan love this book?

This fascinating, nail-biter of a tale has all the elements of a novel: quirky characters, chance encounters, a determined female curator, chase scenes, mystery, and hunt for something that scientists believed existed only in the fossil record. The story begins in 1938 in South Africa on the deck of a trawler, with young Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer picking through a pile of sharks, starfish, and ratfishā€”to uncover a beautiful, five-foot-long fish with hard iridescent scales and limb-like fins. Weinberg brings the story, and the coelacanth, to life, weaving a narrative as breathtaking as the fish itself. I enjoyed this book immensely!

By Samantha Weinberg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Fish Caught in Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A gripping story of obsession, adventure and the search for our oldest surviving ancestor - 400 million years old - a four-limbed dinofish!

In 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a young South African museum curator, caught sight of a specimen among a fisherman's trawl that she knew was special. With limb-like protuberances culminating in fins the strange fish was unlike anything she had ever seen. The museum board members dismissed it as a common lungfish, but when Marjorie eventually contacted Professor JLB Smith, he immediately identified her fish as a coelacanth - a species known to have lived 400 million years ago,ā€¦


Book cover of Monarchs of the Sea: The Extraordinary 500-Million-Year History of Cephalopods

Susan Ewing Author Of Resurrecting the Shark: A Scientific Obsession and the Mavericks Who Solved the Mystery of a 270-Million-Year-Old Fossil

From my list on curious creatures from deep time.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was young, I worked on fishing boats in Alaska and developed an affection for weird sea creatures. All manner of unusual marine life would come up on the line, like wild-looking sea stars, pointy-nosed skates, and alien-looking ratfish. Later, I graduated from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks with a degree in Communications. One of my early jobs was with the Washington Department of Wildlife public information department, writing about fish, as well as other wildlife-related topics. When I moved to Bozeman, Montana, I had the opportunity to create content for a museum exhibit on early life forms. That hooked me on all things paleo. It is a joy to write about and share the things I loveā€”like oddball creatures from deep time.

Susan's book list on curious creatures from deep time

Susan Ewing Why did Susan love this book?

Evolution, extinction, evo-devo, a ā€œvampire squid from hellā€ā€”what more could a paleo-curious reader ask for? Staaf keeps it interesting and breezy as she takes a deep dive into the mysteries of that most ancient and fascinating group, the cephalopods. The fossil record for this extraordinary, important, and long-surviving class (which includes ammonoids and nautiloids as well as the shell-free squids and octopuses) goes back 500 million years. The book is full of ā€œwows,ā€ like a 20-foot-long fossil shell, and the fact that ink has been reconstituted from fossil belemnites and used for illustration. Just wow.

By Danna Staaf,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Monarchs of the Sea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An epic and fun history spanning from the mollusks that invented swimming to the octopuses and other intelligent cephalopods of today Publisher's Note: Monarchs of the Sea was previously published in hardcover as Squid Empire.

Before mammals, there were dinosaurs. And before dinosaurs, there were cephalopods--the ancestors of modern squid, octopuses, and more creatures--Earth's first truly substantial animals. Essentially inventing the act of swimming, cephalopods presided over an undersea empire for millions of years--until fish evolved jaws, and cephalopods had to step up their game or risk being eaten. To keep up, some streamlined their shells and added defensive spines,ā€¦


Book cover of Planet Ocean: A Story of Life, the Sea and Dancing to the Fossil Record

Susan Ewing Author Of Resurrecting the Shark: A Scientific Obsession and the Mavericks Who Solved the Mystery of a 270-Million-Year-Old Fossil

From my list on curious creatures from deep time.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was young, I worked on fishing boats in Alaska and developed an affection for weird sea creatures. All manner of unusual marine life would come up on the line, like wild-looking sea stars, pointy-nosed skates, and alien-looking ratfish. Later, I graduated from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks with a degree in Communications. One of my early jobs was with the Washington Department of Wildlife public information department, writing about fish, as well as other wildlife-related topics. When I moved to Bozeman, Montana, I had the opportunity to create content for a museum exhibit on early life forms. That hooked me on all things paleo. It is a joy to write about and share the things I loveā€”like oddball creatures from deep time.

Susan's book list on curious creatures from deep time

Susan Ewing Why did Susan love this book?

Planet Ocean is a rollicking romp of a book, even while it is being deeply informative. The writing is full of wit and story, with a strong undertow of awe at the wonders of evolution and geologic time. We learn about these things along with Matsen as he and Troll go on a trilobite safari, visit museums and scientists, and dig for dinosaurs in the badlands of Alberta. The book is lavishly illustrated with Trollā€™s surreal, sublime, whimsical, and always arresting depictions of such creatures as Xiphactinus, Anomalocaris, Hesperornis, Hallucigenia, and of course Helicoprion.

By Bradford Matsen, Ray Troll,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Planet Ocean as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the paperback edition of the great pop-paleontology book with the fabulous art that inspired a show that toured the nation's natural history museums. In its own way it has inspired many people to take a new look at the fossil record and imagine creatures and things as they might have beenā€”a blend of word and image unlike any other.


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Book cover of From One Cell: A Journey into Life's Origins and the Future of Medicine

From One Cell by Ben Stanger,

Everybody knows that all animalsā€”bats, bears, sharks, ponies, and peopleā€”start out as a single cell: the fertilized egg. But how does something no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence give rise to the remarkable complexity of each of these creatures?

FROM ONE CELL is a diveā€¦

Book cover of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Debra Hendrickson, M.D. Author Of The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change

From my list on environmental health or climate change.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€˜m a pediatrician in Reno, the fastest-warming city in the US. I also have a background in environmental science. Iā€™ve seen the impacts of climate change on children first-hand, especially the impact of worsening wildfire smoke from ā€œmega-firesā€ in California. It is impossible for me to look at babies and children suffering the impacts of worsening smoke, smog, allergies, heat, natural disasters, and infectious diseases and not see that the most powerful industry in history has unloaded the cost of their business onto the least powerful. I am passionate about this topic because I see climate change as a crime against children, who are especially vulnerable to its effects.

Debra's book list on environmental health or climate change

Debra Hendrickson, M.D. Why did Debra love this book?

I loved this book because of its discussion of paleontology (which has always interested me) and the extinctions prior to this one. But I also loved Kolbertā€™s description of the history of paleontology itselfā€”specifically, how the discovery of fossils triggered a crisis in our understanding of ourselves and our world.

Like some of my other selections, this book made me think about humanityā€™s relationship to the planet and the other life we share it with.

By Elizabeth Kolbert,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked The Sixth Extinction as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions of life on earth.

Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Elizabeth Kolbert combines brilliant field reporting, the history of ideas and the work of geologists, botanists and marine biologists to tell the gripping stories of a dozen species - including the Panamanian golden frog and the Sumatran rhino - some already gone, others at the point of vanishing.

The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's mostā€¦


Book cover of Who Will It Be? How Evolution Connects Us All

Jordan Bell Author Of Aunt Jodie's Guide to Evolution

From my list on evolution for children.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a kid, I never stopped asking ā€œBut why?ā€ Learning the answers always led me to new questions, and Iā€™ve been on a life-long journey to understand the world, and how everything works. I wanted to give the joy of discovery, and the empowerment of understanding, to a new generation of readers. The amazing story of evolution seemed to be a great starting point. I wrote the book I wanted to read to my own daughter, full of adventures and grown-up science, told in a way kids can understand. 

Jordan's book list on evolution for children

Jordan Bell Why did Jordan love this book?

A more conceptual connection to evolution, this creative book introduces the amazing fact of life and introduces young readers to the fact that all life on Earth is related. I love the way the vibrant illustrations track development from cells to creatures and show how humans, mammals, fish, reptiles, and birds are connected. With back matter to support adults to explain evolution in an age-appropriate way, this story can be a great introduction to answering the question ā€œwhere do people come from?ā€

By Paola Vitale, Rossana BossĆ¹ (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Who Will It Be? How Evolution Connects Us All as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 5, 6, 7, and 8.

What is this book about?

"This is a beautiful and important bookā€”a reminder that humans are deeply connected with every other animal on this glorious planet." ā€”Sy Montgomery, Naturalist and New York Times best selling author

If gills appear, will it be a fish? From fish to frogs to humans, Who Will It Be? introduces the theory of evolution, exploring connections between humans and all life on Earth.

Exploring the origin of animals from fish to frogs to humans, Who Will It Be? introduces Darwinā€™s theory of evolution to children with a simple, captivating story.

Vibrant illustrations and eye-catching primary colors transition the story, drivingā€¦


Book cover of Amazing Evolution: The Journey of Life

Jordan Bell Author Of Aunt Jodie's Guide to Evolution

From my list on evolution for children.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a kid, I never stopped asking ā€œBut why?ā€ Learning the answers always led me to new questions, and Iā€™ve been on a life-long journey to understand the world, and how everything works. I wanted to give the joy of discovery, and the empowerment of understanding, to a new generation of readers. The amazing story of evolution seemed to be a great starting point. I wrote the book I wanted to read to my own daughter, full of adventures and grown-up science, told in a way kids can understand. 

Jordan's book list on evolution for children

Jordan Bell Why did Jordan love this book?

I wish Iā€™d had this richly illustrated book as a curious 10-year-old who wanted to learn about evolution in a very fact-based way. Packed with explanations, illustrations, lists, and definitions, Amazing Evolution helps kids self-educate around how and why evolution happened ā€“ from the origin of life in the sea to the first creatures to survive on land, through to dinosaurs and convergent evolution in mammals. A great book for an older primary kid who wants to understand how all life is related, but wants to find it out themselves. And the ā€œFact Fileā€ at the end of the book is jam-packed with the kind of amazing information that will make readers want to say ā€œDid you knowā€¦?ā€ to everyone they see!

By Anna Claybourne, Wesley Robins (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Amazing Evolution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 9, 10, 11, and 12.

What is this book about?

Evolution can be a difficult idea to wrap our brains around: it deals with random, unlikely events, combined with vast lengths of time too enormous to comprehend. But the evidence is all around usā€“in the fossils of long-dead creatures, and in our genes and the relationships between all living beings.

Amazing Evolution shines a light on this incredible process, from the beginnings of life around 3.8 billion years ago, to the millions of different species alive today, including the moon-walking, talking apes with super-powerful brainsā€“human beings!

Filled with clear explanations, beautiful illustrations and fascinating facts about the planetā€™s strangest andā€¦


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Book cover of What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs

What Walks This Way by Sharman Apt Russell,

Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlifeā€”mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket miceā€”near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marksā€¦

Book cover of Locked in Time: Animal Behavior Unearthed in 50 Extraordinary Fossils

Michael J. Benton Author Of Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost World

From my list on dinosaurs from a paleontologist.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve been mad about dinosaurs and ancient life since I was seven. I have been amazingly lucky to be able to develop a career as a professional palaeontologist and to be able to research and talk about the subject. We were first to show the original colours of dinosaur feathers, and this discovery provides a perfect way to open the discussion about how palaeontologists know what they say they know. In my books, I seek to amaze, amuse and inform. I have written many books, including pop science, textbooks, technical-scientific works, and books for children, and every year brings new discoveries to be transmitted to the world.

Michael's book list on dinosaurs from a paleontologist

Michael J. Benton Why did Michael love this book?

This is about dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, but itā€™s unique and unusual.

Author Dean Lomax has run to ground some of the most extraordinary fossils ever found, and artist Bob Nicholls turns them into stunning reconstructions. Here you can read about a beetle within a lizard within a snake, a giant beaver that made huge corkscrew burrows 3 meters deep, the mammal that ate dinosaurs, insects caught in the act of mating, and dinosaurs with cancer.

What I like is that, weird and wonderful as each story may be, each is based strictly on the fossils and reasonable interpretations of those fossils. Dinosaurs may spark the imagination, but as scientists, itā€™s important to show people how we come to our conclusions, and that needs evidence and reason in a discussion.

By Dean R. Lomax, Robert Nicholls,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Locked in Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Fossils allow us to picture the forms of life that inhabited the earth eons ago. But we long to know more: how did these animals actually behave? We are fascinated by the daily lives of our fellow creatures-how they reproduce and raise their young, how they hunt their prey or elude their predators, and more. What would it be like to see prehistoric animals as they lived and breathed?

From dinosaurs fighting to their deaths to elephant-sized burrowing ground sloths, this book takes readers on a global journey deep into the earth's past. Locked in Time showcases fifty of theā€¦


Book cover of Understanding Human Evolution

Telmo Pievani Author Of Imperfection: A Natural History

From my list on the fact that evolution didn't predict us.

Why am I passionate about this?

Telmo Pievani is Full Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Padua, where he covers the first Italian chair of Philosophy of Biological Sciences. A leading science communicator and columnist for Il corriere della sera, he is the author of The Unexpected Life, Creation without God, Serendipity, and other books.

Telmo's book list on the fact that evolution didn't predict us

Telmo Pievani Why did Telmo love this book?

I like this book so much because it tells us that we are the last twig in a bush of human species.

Until a few tens of millennia ago, five different human species lived on our planet, thatā€™s amazing! Only recently, thanks to the surge of symbolic intelligence, have we become a marvel of creativity and invasiveness, an ambivalent species.

By Ian Tattersall,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Understanding Human Evolution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Human life, and how we came to be, is one of the greatest scientific and philosophical questions of our time. This compact and accessible book presents a modern view of human evolution. Written by a leading authority, it lucidly and engagingly explains not only the evolutionary process, but the technologies currently used to unravel the evolutionary past and emergence of Homo sapiens. By separating the history of palaeoanthropology from current interpretation of the human fossil record, it lays numerous misconceptions to rest, and demonstrates that human evolution has been far from the linear struggle from primitiveness to perfection that we'veā€¦


Book cover of The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

Andrew Newberg Author Of Sex, God, and the Brain: How Sexual Pleasure Gave Birth to Religion and a Whole Lot More

From my list on relationship between sexuality and spirituality.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been exploring the relationship between the brain and religious/spiritual phenomena (a field known as neurotheology) for the past 30 years. My neuroimaging research has helped uncover the brain processes involved with practices like meditation and prayer and a broad array of experiences. The origin of this work derives from evolutionary theories about religion and the brain that tie directly into sexuality. The books on this list greatly helped to provide the foundation for the connection between spirituality and sexuality, opening up all kinds of avenues for exploration, including where human morals, societies, political systems, and religions come from with respect to the human mind.

Andrew's book list on relationship between sexuality and spirituality

Andrew Newberg Why did Andrew love this book?

I loved this book because it clarified a fundamental concept about how our minds evolved through sexual selection. This idea is strongly connected to my own research, which aims to understand the evolutionary basis of religious and spiritual experiences and how they are connected to sexuality.

By understanding how sexual selection works, we can explore the intricate relationship between sexuality and spirituality.

By Geoffrey Miller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Mating Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Evolutionary psychologist geoffrey Miller shows the evolutionary power of sexual choice, and the reason why our ancestors became attracted not only to pretty faces and healthy bodies, but to minds that were witty, articulate, generous, and conscious.


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Book cover of Diary of a Citizen Scientist: Chasing Tiger Beetles and Other New Ways of Engaging the World

Diary of a Citizen Scientist by Sharman Apt Russell,

Citizen Scientist begins with this extraordinary statement by the Keeper of Entomology at the London Museum of Natural History, ā€œStudy any obscure insect for a week and you will then know more than anyone else on the planet.ā€

As the author chases the obscure Western red-bellied tiger beetle across Newā€¦

Book cover of The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

Graham Shields Author Of Born of Ice and Fire: How Glaciers and Volcanoes (with a Pinch of Salt) Drove Animal Evolution

From my list on science in action written by scientists.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a scientist who has worked at the coal face of the debate around the origin of animals and ā€˜Snowball Earthā€™ his entire career, using a combination of experimental and descriptive science. Over three decades, I have witnessed first-hand how careful attention to detail in study after study has removed doubt from once provocative, even crazy, ideas that are now widely accepted. I love reading popular science from the perspective of the hands-on scientist who has witnessed the debate first-hand and contributed to received knowledge by conceiving new experiments, amassing data, and, more than often, in entirely unexpected ways through sheer curiosity.

Graham's book list on science in action written by scientists

Graham Shields Why did Graham love this book?

I cherish this book as I can dip into any part of it and will always learn something new.

I have always been fascinated by the origin of things, and there is nothing more fundamental than the origin of life itself. Nick Lane is on the front line of such research and brings a lot to bear down on this question, from his own laboratory experiments to theoretical biochemistry, all without a hint of condescension. Nick wants to take the reader with him on a personal journey to discover why we are here, and this is a journey I wouldnā€™t miss for the world.

By Nick Lane,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Vital Question as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies and cities. Yet there's a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.

For two and a half billion years, from the very origins of life, single-celled organisms such as bacteria evolved without changing their basic form. Then, on just one occasion in four billionā€¦


Book cover of A Fish Caught in Time
Book cover of Monarchs of the Sea: The Extraordinary 500-Million-Year History of Cephalopods
Book cover of Planet Ocean: A Story of Life, the Sea and Dancing to the Fossil Record

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5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in evolution, fish, and geological time?

Evolution 157 books
Fish 63 books
Geological Time 12 books